With Abele, documentary-maker Fabian Volti draws a bold parallel between Sardinia and Palestine, comparing and seeking out symbolic affinities between the lives of shepherds from the Mediterranean Sea and from the desert regions of the Middle East. The hope is to learn a lesson from these similarities, in “a world dominated by chaos”, as a quote from Lord Byron stresses at the close of the film.

Written by Volti and Stefania Muresu, the film is currently competing for the Corso Salani Prize in the Trieste Film Festival. Ranging between the western Mediterranean island and the Judean desert, which sprawls from the east of Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea, the authors imagined meeting the biblical character who lends the film his name: Abel, Adam and Eve’s second son who tended to a flock of sheep and was ultimately killed by his brother, Cain. As the film informs us, the prophet Muhammed also cared for grazing livestock when he was very young. The film’s photography, by Volti himself in league with Luigi Bosio and Roberto Farace, charts the undulating geometry of lands far from “civilisation”, capturing shades of brown and greyish-green which dissolve into the blues of the distant mountains and sky. Edited by Stefania Muresu, Carlotta Guaraldo and Enrico Masi, the film also avails itself of archive material (from Fondo Fiorenzo Serra Cineteca Sarda, Associated Press and British Paté) and we barely notice the transition from days gone by to today. The narrating voices of Alberto Masala and Odeh Khalil Kharabshe transport us to two different geographical territories with different languages, Arabic and Sardinian, and with faces and cultures whose affinities are clear.

“In my grandfather’s day, Bedouins lived in the mountains; the land between Jerusalem and Bethlehem was a desert”, a young shepherd reminisces. Nobody asked you where you’d come from or where you were going. We see tourists on enduro and quad bikes, whizzing between old, abandoned animal stalls and a modern-day settlement decked out with a handful of solar panels. Now as before, shepherds must cover dozens of kilometres to feed and water their camels and sheep. They face the same dangers: hyenas attacking their lambs, and scorpions while they sleep. The first morning star, Al-Suhail, shines in the East. But the desert no longer belongs to them. “Israeli ships arrived from the Dead Sea a while back and the soldiers shot at the Bedouins. Now there are soldiers everywhere. Prohibited zones. The colonists’ settlements reach to within metres of our homes”.

Severino lives in the vicinity of NATO’s military base in Teulada, Sardinia, and herds his goats in the prohibited zone. The sea is very close by. In the high planes of the Supramonte mountain range, winter is unyielding and shelters for animals and shepherds are still made of juniper wood and stone. Someone tells us that in the spring, eagles would swoop down on lambs, goats and pigs. They had to use an ancient incantation to protect them from raptors. And the first morning star, the shepherd’s star, is still the planet Venus.

The director’s stated aim is to explore the lives of men who live in and struggle against current geopolitical contradictions, repeating centuries-old life cycles, still rooted in territories which have experienced profound change. The comparison might not seem entirely appropriate, since you can’t compare the isolation felt by Sardinian shepherds with the sense of siege experienced by the Palestinians, who have to contend with the occupying state’s colonial policies on a daily basis. But the role played by these shepherds, who still follow the ancient star cycles and who represent an authentic, primitive and sacred form of humanity, influenced by ancient traditions, works well as a metaphor for resistance at all latitudes.

Abele was produced by Roda Film in collaboration with Caucaso.